...unless yours is made from porcelain, weighs 15+ kgs empty and has no tank.

As I said the toilet in my place needed renovation just like the bath. I also mentioned that I'd take care of that real soon, and so it happened: rob needed his tiling gear back, so I spent last weekend on that job.

Apart from the endless running/driving around to find a decent but sensibly priced close-coupled toilet suite this renovation exercise went fairly quickly: Thursday I shopped, Friday I chipped, levelled and tiled, Saturday I plumbed, cut and tiled, Sunday I grouted and on Monday I rest^Wworked. Tuesday the toilet suite was ready for collection and that's when I painted, siliconed the joints and installed the thing.

Here's the obligatory "before" shot, and the messy inbetween:

The tile glue was of the black kind, horribly sticky and as a toilet isn't exactly roomy (and with my lack of a pneumatic hammer) I had to chisel just about forever to remove them. A fair number of hammer blows ended not on the chisel but on my knuckles, and my back was sore from all the crouching.

The next few days I had to use this lug-a-loo (because it's certainly not a porta-anything):

Not exactly convenient but bearable; I had to time the main tiling fine so that I wouldn't need the toilet for about 8 hrs to give to tile glue a decent chance of setting.

After the gutting of the old stuff I continued straight away with a bit of floor leveller and then with tiling all the full tiles (and the easy cuts). That's the state of affairs Friday 23:00.

It was very helpful that I have no weak bladder :-)

Saturday saw me making some more tile dust first, then I discovered yet another cheap shit construction detail and then I glued in the newly cut tiles and the skirting tiles as well.

The gaping hole you see in the middle pic is already the good/almost-finished state: the builder bastards had used only two thin screws to hold the cistern water outlet to the backing wood. One of these screws broke immediately when I tried to remove the old cistern stopcock, and then the stopcock and the threaded pipe rotated in perfect harmony - twisting the copper pipe inside the wall into a veritable pretzel. And once again I had to destroy something before making it better, this time the plasterboard.

To top it off Saturday was one of those unnecessary holidays as well, so no open hardware shops - in Queensland; Bunnings over the border in NSW was open normally, so I had me an afternoon drive, leisurely but still annoying. One new outlet and a compression fitting later I plastered the hole shut (that's what the wooden corner reinforcements are for), and completed the skirting tiles. I like the cut corner tile especially :-)

No pics of the messy grouting. Yesterday, Tuesday, I first collected the toilet from the shop, finally dumped the old loo, then spackled the top tile edges with filler to create a nice slanted transition, then I painted most of the room twice, siliconed the bottom joints. Another trip later I had all the small bits and pieces for the toilet installation, which progressed satisfactorily - until at first I wrecked one glass/tile drill and then my electric drill died on the very last hole.

The thing had been made in 1998, really cheap chinese, and it had emigrated with me. Me being me I opened it up immediately, but the spur gear had lost some teeth - terminal. RIP. Another shopping run later I have a new (also chinese) drill for not more money than this one cost in 98, and I finished everything up.

And that's it. Todo: some more cleanup and replacing of the ugly stopcock (for the whole house) to the right of the toilet.